Hollywood & Mine News from Tinseltown

Cookin’ with ‘Downton Abbey’

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Anyone who’s in the vicinity of Broadway this fall and is a huge fan of Downton Abbey will want to check out the starry revival of The Heiress with Oscar nominee and all round It Girl Jessica Chastain as the plain rich spinster and Dan Stevens as the fortune hunter who could make her happy. Stevens is the dashing Brit who plays Matthew Crawley, the presumptive heir to the English mansion, on Downton Abbey whose third season on PBS won't begin until the new year. The Heiress, whose film version won Olivia de Havilland one of her two Academy Award Best Actress Oscars and also scored on an earlier Broadway revival Cherry Jones's Tony as Best Actress, begins previews Oct. 7 and runs thru February

In the meantime, if food or cooking or acting like a servant and serving food you cooked could be your temporary substitute for Downton Abbey, you could do worse than check out The UNOFFICIAL Downton Abbey Cookbook ($21.95, Adams Media) by Emily Ansara Baines. UNOFFICIAL because I gather an OFFICIAL cookbook is coming.

The Avon, MA publisher has come up with an inspired by rather than offered by the makers of cookbook that takes the protocols and ingredients of the era and comes up with 12 chapters, starting with Hors d’Oeuvres, continuing through Desserts and then proceeding to Tea, Breakfast, Lunch and, of course, the servants’ Suppers and Desserts.

A work then of scholarship and research as well as fan-tastic appreciation, this Downton Abbey Cookbook also has, as the Introduction states, “a nearly fanatic appreciation for rich food.” Those Edwardians didn’t worry about cholesterol, heart attacks or diet.

Being UNOFFICIAL this cookbook indulges in lots of “it’s likely” or “might offer” as in “The Countess of Graham might offer the Potatoes with Caviar and CrÃ¨me ... she would likely offer more than one appetizer.” Such are the divisions between authorized, which gives the creators a cut of the proceeds, to unauthorized.

That said, there are still recipes like Mrs. Patmore’s Christmas Pudding, Thomas’s Salted Cod Cakes and Lady Mary’s Spicy Mulligatawny Soup that make you think this is the real deal.

Wagner will always be with us (at least this week)

PBS is not sitting around waiting for Dowton Abbey to return. No indeed, this week they are presenting the Metropolitan Opera’s controversial new “Ring” cycle as conceived by the Montreal artist Robert Le Page with its 45-ton – yes, 45-ton – set nicknamed ‘the Machine,” a monster of machinery whose moving panels upon which video projections were shown was basically why people either loved or hated the four Richard Wagner operas that comprise this touchstone to opera-going. Happily, Monday night at 9 PM (EST), PBS presents the engaging and often amusing behind the scenes documentary Wagner’s Dream by Susan Froemke as an introduction to the Wagnerian wallow that follows. Given that Froemke must be in the very good graces of the Met front office to gain access for a project like this Wagner’s Dream is surprisingly and happily willing to raise all the thorny issues. Wagner's Complete Ring Cycle then begins Tuesday for four nights of opera that totals 16 hours. That’s a lot of coffee.